ArticleJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA2017
Graphics help patients distinguish between urgent and non-urgent deviations in laboratory test results.
Article in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 94 citations in OpenAlex.
- Patient Experiences With Online Laboratory Test Presentations From Access to Activation: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Pooled it
- Enhancing Patient Understanding of Laboratory Test Results: Systematic Review of Presentation Formats and Their Impact on Perception, Decision, Action, and Memory.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- Taxonomies for synthesizing the evidence on communicating numbers in health: Goals, format, and structure.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2022Pooled it
- Interventions to increase patient portal use in vulnerable populations: a systematic review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2019Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Patient-Facing Visualizations of Personal Health Data.Applied clinical informatics · 2019Pooled it
- Numbers, graphs and words - do we really understand the lab test results accessible via the patient portals?Israel journal of health policy research · 2020Trial
- A personalized tutorial to improve understanding of individual chemical results and opportunities for reducing exposure.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2026Article
- The effect of adding visual summaries to data visualizations on patient judgments of hypertension control.JAMIA open · 2026Article
- From participatory design to clinical routine: new concepts for visualizing patient-reported outcomes in breast cancer care.Journal of patient-reported outcomes · 2026Article
- Effects of information framing cues and age on the comprehension of personal health records for self-care behaviors: an eye-tracking study.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Enhancing patient engagement and understanding: is providing direct access to laboratory results through patient portals adequate?JAMIA open · 2025Article
- Developing feedback visualizations to support older adults' medication adherence.Human factors in healthcare · 2024Article
- "R" you getting this? Factors contributing to the public's understanding, evaluation, and use of basic reproduction numbers for infectious diseases.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Patient experiences with patient-led, home-based follow-up after curative treatment for colorectal cancer: a qualitative study.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Visualizing machine learning-based predictions of postpartum depression risk for lay audiences.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2024Article
- Do you want to promote recall, perceptions, or behavior? The best data visualization depends on the communication goal.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2024Article
- Evaluating the Landscape of Personal Health Records in Korea: Results of the National Health Informatization Survey.Healthcare informatics research · 2023Article
- Consumers' Needs for Laboratory Results Portals: Questionnaire Study.JMIR human factors · 2023Article
- A RE-AIM Evaluation of a Visualization-Based Electronic Patient-Reported Outcome System.Applied clinical informatics · 2023Article
- Recentering responsible and explainable artificial intelligence research on patients: implications in perinatal psychiatry.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveMost electronic health record systems provide laboratory test results to patients in table format. We tested whether presenting such results in visual displays (number lines) could improve understanding. MATERIALS AND
methodsWe presented 1620 adults recruited from a demographically diverse Internet panel with hypothetical results from several common laboratory tests, first showing near-normal results and then more extreme values. Participants viewed results in either table format (with a "standard range" provided) or one of 3 number line formats: a simple 2-color format, a format with diagnostic categories such as "borderline high" indicated by colored blocks, and a gradient format that used color gradients to smoothly represent increasing risk as values deviated from standard ranges. We measured respondents' subjective sense of urgency about each test result, their behavioral intentions, and their perceptions of the display format.
resultsVisual displays reduced respondents' perceived urgency and desire to contact health care providers immediately for near-normal test results compared to tables but did not affect their perceptions of extreme values. In regression analyses controlling for respondent health literacy, numeracy, and graphical literacy, gradient line displays resulted in the greatest sensitivity to changes in test results. DISCUSSION: Unlike tables, which only tell patients whether test results are normal or not, visual displays can increase the meaningfulness of test results by clearly defining possible values and leveraging color cues and evaluative labels.
conclusionPatient-facing displays of laboratory test results should use visual displays rather than tables to increase people's sensitivity to variations in their results.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.